The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry

About the podcast The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry

Science sleuths Dr Adam Rutherford and Dr Hannah Fry investigate everyday mysteries sent by listeners.

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2022
Welcome to Think with Pinker
Steven Pinker tells us all about his series from Radio 4, with special guest Hannah Fry! Listen to Think with Pinker on BBC Sounds.
January 10, 2022
10 min
2021
Rutherford and Fry on Living with AI: A Future for Humans
As huge tech companies race to develop ever more powerful AI systems, the creation of super-intelligent machines seems almost inevitable. But what happens when, one day, we set these advanced AIs loose? How can we be sure they’ll have humanity’s best interests in their cold silicon hearts? Inspired by Stuart Russell’s fourth and final Reith lecture, AI-expert Hannah Fry and AI-curious Adam Rutherford imagine how we might build an artificial mind that knows what’s good for us and always does the right thing. Can we ‘programme’ machine intelligence to always be aligned with the values of its human creators? Will it be suitably governed by a really, really long list of rules - or will it need a set of broad moral principles to guide its behaviour? If so, whose morals should we pick? On hand to help Fry and Rutherford unpick the ethical quandaries of our fast-approaching future are Adrian Weller, Programme Director for AI at The Alan Turing Institute, and Brian Christian, author of The Alignment Problem. Producer - Melanie Brown Assistant Producer - Ilan Goodman
December 23, 2021
28 min
Rutherford and Fry on Living with AI: AI in the Economy
The refrain ‘robots will take your job’ is one heard with increased frequency, but how quickly is automation of the labour force really happening and would it really be such a bad thing if many jobs were powered by artificial intelligence? In this third episode, inspired by this year’s BBC Reith lectures from AI expert Stuart Russell, Adam Rutherford and Hannah Fry - together with expert guests - imagine what the future of work might look like. Will the move towards increased use of artificial intelligence in areas like healthcare, customer service and manufacturing see jobs disappear or will it simply create new ones we cannot yet imagine? Economists are divided on what the effects of machines doing our jobs will be. Some argue it could lead to wide scale unemployment, or skilled workers being forced in into lower skilled jobs. Others believe this might be an opportunity to reshape our socio-economic systems to one where workers are freed from tedious repetitive jobs and instead have more leisure time to pursue their own interests and find meaning outside of work. Will we all one day receive a universal basic income and stop asking each other what we do for work when we meet someone new? Producer - Melanie Brown Assistant Producer - Ilan Goodman
December 15, 2021
28 min
Rutherford and Fry on Living with AI: AI in Warfare
What if a despotic leader could programme a swarm of drones to kill a set of identified targets with just the push of a button? Due to ever expanding AI capabilities this extreme dystopian vision may not be technically unfeasible. In this second of a four part series responding to this year's BBC Reith lectures from Stuart Russell, Adam Rutherford and Hannah Fry unpick the role of AI in warfare. Joining them to help them navigate the battlefield of information is Ulrike Franke, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations who specialises in the future of warfare. Together they will be investigating 'lethal autonomous weapons' - these are weapons that can find, chose and kill human targets without human supervision. We will be discussing how advanced this technology actually is - some think the world may have already experienced the first ever autonomous strike in Libya. What are the repercussions of this technology for safety on the battlefield , and what are the wider geo-political ramifications? Stuart Russell has deep concerns over the development of these types of weapons and Rutherford and Fry pick apart some of the ethical debates this technology raises. Who would be responsible if a system malfunctioned and killed a civilian? What's to stop it getting into the wrong hands? Should we even be creating these weapons in the first place - do we instead need a convention banning them? And is that even possible?
December 8, 2021
28 min
Rutherford and Fry on Living with AI: The Biggest Event in Human History
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already ubiquitous in our lives. It curates our nightly TV entertainment, connects us to our friends online and navigates us, mostly successfully, to our destinations. However these uses are just the beginning, and it will likely bring societal changes we can’t yet imagine. In this year’s BBC Reith lectures, AI expert Professor Stuart Russell will be exploring how AI has been represented in popular fiction, envisaging how this technology might shape our futures and how we best prepare for it. So who better to unwrap his ideas than science sleuths Adam Rutherford and Hannah Fry, with their customary curiosity and irreverent insights? In this, the first of four episodes, Rutherford and Fry – together with guests author and podcaster Azeem Azhar and AI scholar Kate Crawford - will be unravelling what we actually mean by AI, exploring how far machine learning already underpins our lives, imagining the functions it might provide in the future and asking what challenges and risks might lie ahead. Can AI transform society as profoundly as electricity once did leading to a golden age for humanity, or have we all watched too many sci-fi movies?
December 1, 2021
28 min
The Venomous Vendetta
Whilst watching a documentary about some poisonous frogs, Curio Janni in Amsterdam, started to wonder what would happen if a frog licked itself or another frog of the same species. She asks Dr Adam Rutherford and Professor Hannah Fry to investigate whether an animal would react badly to a toxin it itself produces? In essence, 'can a venomous snake kill itself by biting itself?' Of course the answer is complicated, but the sleuths know exactly who to ask. Steve Backshall, award-winning wildlife explorer, best known for his BBC series 'Deadly 60'. Author of 'Venom – Poisonous Creatures in the Natural World'. Steve has been bitten, stung and spat at by a plethora of venomous creatures during his career. He also studied the first-known venomous newt - the sharp-ribbed newt - a creature that has sharpened ribs that when it's under attack, it will squeeze its body force those ribs out through its skin, coating them in venom, which is then delivered into the mouth of an attacker. Professor Nick Casewell, studies venomous snakes and their impact on humans. He works on treatments for snakebites at the Liverpool School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Snakebites have a huge impact on communities in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and South America. It's now been reinstated as one of the most serious neglected tropical diseases by the World Health Organisation. Traditional treatments - antivenins - can be expensive, difficult to access and don't always work - Nick is looking into alternative medicines to treat snakebite victims. Dr. Ronald Jenner is Principle Researcher in the Comparative Venomics group at the Natural History Museum's Life Sciences, Invertebrates Division and co-wrote the book ‘Venom -the secrets of nature's deadliest weapon.’ He explains the evolutionary arms race between venomous predators and their prey and poisonous prey and their predators. He explains how resistance to venom has evolved and how venom has evolved to be more or less powerful over time, answering another Curio - Scott Probert's question on the evolution of venom. Christie Wilcox wrote 'Venomous – How Earth’s Deadliest Creatures Mastered Biochemistry'. She studied the molecular basis of lionfish venom. Christie describes how venom and immunity to venom works at the molecular level. Presenters - Adam Rutherford and Hannah Fry Produced by Fiona Roberts
November 11, 2021
43 min
The Slippery Situation
'What is the slipperiest thing in the world?' asks 8 year old Evelyn? 'Why do my feet slip on a wet floor but when my feet are even slightly moist it's nearly impossible to put on a pair of socks without falling over and cursing the universe. What is going on here?' asks Evelyn's Dad, Sam. Hannah and Adam investigate the science of friction and lubrication - so called 'tribology' with the help of tribologists and mechanical engineers Professor Ashlie Martini from California University Merced and Professor Roger Lewis from the University of Sheffield. With their help Hannah and Adam find out why leaves on the line are so slippery, what happens to graphite in space and what is the slipperiest food. Professor of Materials, Mark Miodownik from University College London explains what's going on when friction stops two materials sliding past each other and wonders whether the slipperiest substance was actually discovered accidentally in a lab by scientists looking for something completely different. Also in the programme why the ability to reduce friction, even by minuscule amounts could have a huge impact for sustainability and reducing energy use. Producers: Jen Whyntie and Pamela Rutherford
November 4, 2021
38 min
The Painless Heart
Why does my heart not ache after exercise? asks listener Keith. Rutherford and Fry explore how and why heart muscle cells are special. Dr Mitch Lomax is a sports scientist at the University of Portsmouth. She helps actual Olympic swimmers get faster. She explains how most of the muscles attached to our skeletons work: Tiny fibres use small-scale cellular energy, which, when all these fibres work in concert, turns into visible muscular movement. Mitch also explains how the dreaded Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness, or DOMS, can hit, taking a stair-wincing 48-72 hours to peak after exercise. But skeletal muscles turn out to be quite different to heart muscles, as consultant cardiologist Dr Rohin Francis explains. Heart cells are more efficient and don't get fatigued like skeletal muscle cells. They are extremely energetic and 'just want to beat'. He also explains that the sensory feedback from the heart muscles is different too. They have a different sort of nerve supply, with fewer sensory nerves, so that there is less chance of pain signals being sent to the brain. However, heart cells' incredible abilities are counterbalanced by one Achilles-like flaw: They cannot easily heal. Professor Sanjay Sinha is a British Heart Foundation (BHF) Senior Research Fellow and a Professor in Cardiovascular Regenerative Medicine at the University of Cambridge. His job is to fix broken hearts and he explains to Adam how new research into stem cells could be used to fix normally irreparable heart cells. Producer - Jennifer Whyntie and Fiona Roberts Presenters - Hannah Fry and Adam Rutherford
October 28, 2021
38 min

About the podcast The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry

Science sleuths Dr Adam Rutherford and Dr Hannah Fry investigate everyday mysteries sent by listeners.

The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry

About the podcast The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry

Categories

Welcome to Think with Pinker

Rutherford and Fry on Living with AI: A Future for Humans

Rutherford and Fry on Living with AI: AI in the Economy

Rutherford and Fry on Living with AI: AI in Warfare

Rutherford and Fry on Living with AI: The Biggest Event in Human History

The Venomous Vendetta

The Slippery Situation

The Painless Heart

About the podcast The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry

Categories